U.S. intel official told Senate: Four of the Taliban Five are likely to return to the battlefield

posted at 11:31 am on June 10, 2014 by Allahpundit

As damning as that headline is, I think this Eli Lake/Kimberly Dozier piece ends up being the best defense yet of why Obama agreed to make the swap. Per their sources, the Taliban had all but given up on an exchange for Bergdahl after so many years of false starts and wanted to kill him. It was the Haqqanis, who were holding Bergdahl prisoner, who still wanted a deal. That meant O could either make the deal and take a ferocious political beating for trading five dangerous savages for an American who had, after all, deserted — or he could walk away and take a ferocious political beating for abandoning an American to his fate after the eventual propaganda video of Bergdahl being beheaded started circulating.

In fact, it could be that O boxed himself in here by letting Bergdahl’s parents get too close to the process. They were, apparently, being looped in on CENTCOM briefings about their son; they knew enough about the White House’s efforts to bring him home to have blabbed about a possible prisoner swap more than two years ago. If, after all that, Obama decided the price was too steep and walked away from negotiations, Bob Bergdahl would have raised holy hell in the media about how there was a deal for his son on the table and the president wouldn’t take it. The strategic argument for not doing the deal was strong — you don’t send killers back into battle to target your boys when hostilities haven’t ended — but it was no-win politically, so Obama opted for what he thought would be the most easily spinnable option, namely, bringing Bergdahl back on the principle that we leave no man behind. The Taliban we released can, after all, always be droned later if need be:

A top intelligence official told lawmakers in a classified Senate briefing last week that he expected four out of the five Taliban leaders released by the Obama administration to eventually return to the battlefield…

It also means that President Obama was faced with a particularly excruciating choice as he weighed whether or not to swap these five for American hostage Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The government of Qatar, which agreed to look after the five Taliban leaders as part of the deal for Bergdahl, warned that factions within the Taliban were growing impatient, and campaigning to kill Bergdahl instead of trading him.

“Time is not on your side,” they told U.S. negotiators, according to two senior defense officials. They described a growing split within Taliban and Haqqani Network (which held Bergdahl) over how to best use the soldier—a split confirmed by multiple Taliban and Afghan sources in the region.

Another U.S. official told Lake and Dozier that Bergdahl was held for two years in a tiny cage, with a hood on except for when he needed to eat. How that squares with James Rosen’s bombshell last week about Bergdahl laughing, playing soccer, and even carrying a gun after converting to Islam in captivity is unclear. Rosen’s report also had details about a cage, but supposedly Bergdahl was trustworthy enough to have been freed from that by 2012. We’ll know more soon.

Most of this, according to Lake and Dozier, was spelled out to the Senate in last week’s classified briefing, including the likelihood that four of the Five will be back shooting at American soldiers sooner or later. Which is … curious, because if Foreign Policy is right, the classified briefing given to the House last night was very different:

Facing growing skepticism on Capitol Hill about its decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House told lawmakers at a classified briefing late Monday night that some of the freed militants were political figures, not hardened soldiers, according to lawmakers who attended the session…

“They don’t seem to have been combatants at all,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who attended Monday’s briefing. “The guys we traded, you hear all kinds of things about ‘they killed Americans.’ Three of them were governors of provinces under the Taliban government…They were governors.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who also attended the briefing, agreed. “Who are these people? As it turns out … they were government officials. They weren’t soldiers, and they aren’t soldiers now.”

I don’t know how to square that with the Lake/Dozier piece. Neither does John Hudson, the author of the Foreign Policy story on the House briefing. It makes no sense that the White House would lie to one chamber of Congress but not the other; word will get out about what was said in each briefing and people will notice the contradiction. Maybe different intel personnel are drawing different conclusions about the jihadist tendencies among the Taliban Five and then relaying that info to Congress? You would think the White House could call a huddle and get everyone on the same page before briefing the legislature, but they’re two years into lame-duckery. Maybe they don’t care enough to do that anymore.

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Facing growing skepticism on Capitol Hill about its decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House told lawmakers at a classified briefing late Monday night that some of the freed militants were political figures, not hardened soldiers, according to lawmakers who attended the session.

In the past several days, the administration has rolled out a number of reasons to justify swapping Bergdahl, a potential deserter, for the five Taliban officials. White House officials said they had concerns about Berdgahl’s health, felt an obligation to never leave a soldier on the battlefield, and feared the militants were preparing to kill the missing soldier. But House lawmakers exiting a late Monday briefing said the administration was now shifting to a new defense that emphasized the lack of threat posed by the individuals that were released as part of the deal.

They discussed “the dangerousness of the individuals,” or lack thereof, said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) in an interview, referring to Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mullah Mohammad Fazi, Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mohammad Nabi Omari, otherwise known as the “Taliban Five.” While Turner said he didn’t trust the way the administration characterized their rap sheets, other Democratic lawmakers were convinced that claims about the Taliban Five being “hardcore” terrorists were exaggerated.

“They don’t seem to have been combatants at all,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who attended Monday’s briefing. “The guys we traded, you hear all kinds of things about ‘they killed Americans.’ Three of them were governors of provinces under the Taliban government…They were governors.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who also attended the briefing, agreed. “Who are these people? As it turns out … they were government officials. They weren’t soldiers, and they aren’t soldiers now.”

The takeaway from Democrats appeared to differ with the supposed characterization of the Taliban Five offered by intelligence officials last week in a briefing with Senate lawmakers, according to a report by the Daily Beast. In that story, a senior intelligence official allegedly told lawmakers that he expected four out of the five Taliban members to return to the battlefield.

Men, who are wanted by The Hague for war crimes involving the murder of – literally – thousands of Shi’ites and ethnic cleansing aren’t dangerous to kooks like Nadler, Zofgren, and Schakowsky.

Why do people like Nadler, Zofgren, and Schakowsky hate brown-skinned Muslims?

Go ahead and wet yourselves conservatives, meanwhile O will be firing up the drone for these guys. Then again part of me believes you 2nd amendment/Old Testament savages are just angry because you all would have loved seeing Berghdahl beheaded.

Support the troops! Except for the obviously mentally troubled ones kept in a cage for 4 years….l

“Per their sources, the Taliban had all but given up on an exchange for Bergdahl after so many years of false starts and wanted to kill him. It was the Haqqanis, who were holding Bergdahl prisoner, who still wanted a deal. That meant O could either make the deal and take a ferocious political beating for trading five dangerous savages for an American who had, after all, deserted…”

No, it doesn’t. He could have upped the cash prize, he could have cut his losses, he could have sent in a larger team to A) retreive him, and b) worst case provide the guy with a more merciful end than being beheaded on video.

They kept Bergdahl for *five years*. That doesn’t happen unless the US has already slammed down to their knees, and this admin has a *miserable* negotiating record, or they find the hostage likable for other reasons.

The Taliban had written Bergdahl off because responsible people had told them to eff off in previous negotiations. The Haqqani, from my understanding, are less interested in exchanges than in cash. Obama provided them with both, I suspect, and he traded them the G5 because he didn’t have a shot in hell of getting them out of Gitmo any other way without doing it under the table, and out of the press. That’s the leak they were afraid of.

Go ahead and wet yourselves conservatives, meanwhile O will be firing up the drone for these guys.

The Velvet Mafia on June 10, 2014 at 11:53 AM

Not in Qatar, my dear.

Then again part of me believes you 2nd amendment/Old Testament savages are just angry because you all would have loved seeing Berghdahl beheaded.

Yeah, right. This atheist really wanted Bergdahl beheaded.///

Like the majority of Americans, I think the price was too high, especially for someone, who, according to the 2010 Pentagon report, walked away from his post abandoning his comrades-in-arms during a time of war.

Support the troops! Except for the obviously mentally troubled ones kept in a cage for 4 years….l

LOLZ. He wasn’t kept in a cage for 4 years. It is quite hard to play soccer with your captors and go to target practise carrying an AK-47 when you are in a cage.

“They don’t seem to have been combatants at all,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who attended Monday’s briefing. “The guys we traded, you hear all kinds of things about ‘they killed Americans.’ Three of them were governors of provinces under the Taliban government…They were governors.”

Well, hell then. Why didn’t we release these poor innocent governors a long time ago? /

WELL, THIS IS INTERESTING: Looks Like Bowe Bergdahl’s Father Was in Contact With Al Qaeda
Robert Bergdahl Watched & Favorited YouTube Video From Anwar al-Awlaki of Al Qaeda…
Resist We Much on June 10, 2014 at 11:48 AM

That meant O could either make the deal and take a ferocious political beating for trading five dangerous savages for an American who had, after all, deserted — or he could walk away and take a ferocious political beating for abandoning an American to his fate after the eventual propaganda video of Bergdahl being beheaded started circulating.

First off, that’s assuming he was interested in returning an American soldier. I think it’s much more plausible that he’s in a rush to close down Gitmo (especially if the 2014 election is really bad for him) so he was looking for any excuse to start emptying the pens. Heck, you see he’s already ramping up to get rid of more… is there a soldier for that exchange as well? If you’re going to empty out a prison then wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of the worst first? Then when your opponents realize what you’ve done and try to stop future actions you can point to the remaining prisoners who aren’t nearly as bad and wonder aloud if it’s really worth keeping them under lock-and-key for the rest of their lives.

We’ve seen that Obama doesn’t care about political beatings, if he really wanted to lessen any damage of another beheading he could just tell the truth – which is that this guy deserted and was probably helping the enemy, it’s this which is hurting him right now.

“They don’t seem to have been combatants at all,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who attended Monday’s briefing. “The guys we traded, you hear all kinds of things about ‘they killed Americans.’ Three of them were governors of provinces under the Taliban government…They were governors.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who also attended the briefing, agreed. “Who are these people? As it turns out … they were government officials. They weren’t soldiers, and they aren’t soldiers now.”

Fascinating how we’ve been told for years what pipe-hitting maniacs the Tali Fab 5 were/are, and now all of a sudden when Obama needs political cover for this fast-growing debacle, two of the most reliably whacked-out, Obama-loving lefty nutjobs in Congress try and change the tune claiming these dudes were actually never violent like we’ve been told for years that they were, and are in fact no different than local elected officials in any civilized country.

There’s a picture making the rounds on social media of Mohammed Fazi posing over five decapitated human heads.

Yeah, these guys aren’t dangerous.

But that’s not the end of it:

In fact, it could be that O boxed himself in here by letting Bergdahl’s parents get too close to the process. They were, apparently, being looped in on CENTCOM briefings about their son; they knew enough about the White House’s efforts to bring him home to have blabbed about a possible prisoner swap more than two years ago.

This is in and of itself an insanely stupid action. The kind you only see in a satirical movie about wacky dictators and their “strategies.” We are governed by total morons.